We have now joined the Gaming Club Network (GCN)… isn’t that great news?

What is it and what does it do for us I hear you say? Well, the GCN is a network of gaming clubs, to quote from their site:

The Gaming Club Network (GCN) is a voluntary organisation, created in 1999, set upon the idea of bringing together like-minded people to encourage others to try our hobby. Our purpose is to provide the opportunity for individuals and member clubs to participate in the hobby of collecting, painting and gaming with miniatures, table top games, Board games and role play games.

The GCN strives to meet the following six objectives:
• To assist running local gaming events
• To support club activities
• To assist running games at local and national levels
• To provide a forum for gaming clubs
• To facilitate club development
• To promote good communications between Gaming Clubs, and games originators, manufacturers and retailers

The things you will most easily notice are discounts from gaming companies (including some free games for the club!), notification of events run by other members and advertising of our club on their site and in gaming publications (although, if you are reading this, you have already found us).

Well we are still here, even if I don’t update this as often as I should. Anyway, the annual Dreadball league will be starting in the next couple of months. If you are interested in signing up or finding out more, comment here or on our facebook page (link is under “useful links”).

Last year’s league went really well and and we finished it with the an Ultimate playoff:

Yes, the Scout Hut has finally been renovated and we will be back to our usual Wednesday nights from 13/11/13. Same times, same location, same prices. Looking forward to seeing you all then. I am sure you are all as excited as the Beavers below…

Well, dear members, you are probably aware that all is not going to plan with the move back to the scout hut as they are running late with the refit. This means no club for now… boooo! To get up to date info on whether the club will be on on a given night, check out our Facebook group (link in the left navigation bar) or email us if you don’t use Facebook (check out the contacts tab).

If you are interested in how the refit is going, the Scouts have a webpage showing the progress:

Well, the long awaited rennovation of the old scout hut has nearly been finished so we will back there starting from the 9th October 2013 and back to our usual slot of Wednesdays. The other really good news is we are also back to the longer evening we know you all love- don’t say we don’t spoil you.

Tonight, 24th April 2013, was our LAST NIGHT at our current venue on Flamsteed Road at the Scout Hut. Starting on the 6th May, we are MOVING to the Scout Hut in Newnham, Cambridge. We are ALSO MOVING NIGHTS to Mondays due to lack of mid week availability at the new location.

The Flamsteed Rd Scout Hut has long been pushing for a refurbishment (which I’m sure you all agree is much needed) and on Tuesday 23nd April (yes, ONE day ago!!) we were given notice that work would commence from the 29th April – next week..making this week our last available evening til the refurbishment has been completed.

Rather than cry about super short notice, curl up in a ball an cry like girls.. your club organisers have risen to the challenge and in just a day have secured a new location for the spring/summer.

How long will this last? Is it permanent?

No.
It will start on the 6th May and run for 12 sessions ONLY til late August, when the club will take a well deserved ‘summer break’, reopening again in the brand new, spiffy Flamsteed Road “HOME” venue..

The refurb of Flamsteed is scheduled to last til mid-August. We’ve planned for the worst and have secured a venue til mid-Sept.

FAQ/issues:

The good news:
– The club still exists and will grow and thrive
– It will NOT COST A PENNY MORE for members and non-members alike.
– We can still store our terrain and boards meaning we will have the SAME PROVISION OF TABLES as we do now, if not MORE!
– We can still OFFER PARKING in the shared parking of the Newnham Croft school next door – so BETTER PARKING!
– We are still IN TOWN, no further out…just in a different direction!

The bad news:
– it’s only 7:30 til 10:30 meaning you will only get one game of 40k/warhammer in, but dreadball/blood bowl/Malifaux leagues will all be unaffected.

Things are going quite well for the club and attendence is up- no doubt helped by GamesWorkshop’s policy of closing 2 days a week and not having a late night gaming evening. But we are happy to be here for all your gaming needs and support them by providing a friendly evironment to play GW’s and others gaming systems- their loss is our gain! We seem to be looking at ~15 people a night, but we are still not crowded if you want to come and try us out.

We also now have a Facebook group, if the forums are not enough (you need to be logged into Facebook to see it). It is an open group so you should be able to just join yourself. We have people chatting about everything from new codex prices to questions about the club and even a discussion about Warhammer Fantasy Battle (yes, my personal bias is creeping in…). There are also quite a few pictures of people’s miniatures. Why don’t you have a look and see what is going on? I have added a link to the left hand side of site, so you can easily find it. If you would also like to see the club on twitter or Google+, or indeed any other social media site, let us know and I will do my best to make it happen.

A couple of people have asked about the possibility of painting on club nights. If this is something that would interest you, post on Facebook or the forums or even email us directly. We would also like to hear what form you think this should take as it is not something we have offered in any form before now.

…at least I hope that is why we have been quite light on the ground at recent meetings. Maybe you are all relaxing in the sun or having barbeques…oh yes, this is the UK, so it has rained almost solidly for the last 5 weeks….. Anyway we would love to have you back, so if there is anything putting you off, or something you would like us to do, let us know, we are not psychic. We run this club for you the members, so if you are not happy- tell us.

Our glorious committee get to grips with Dystopian wars....

In other news, some of our glorious committee members are straying from the true path of gaming that is GW errr, sorry, are broadening their horizons and taking up Dystopian wars. This is a primarly ship based game (although there are land forces too) with a futuristic steampunk feel. It looks like a pale shadow of Man’O War oops another minor slip up, quite fun with its “exploding 6s” mechanic, meaning that nearly anything can theoretically destroy anything else, with a lot of luck… Quite a few people are trying this out at the minute so there will be a game of it running pretty much every week if you want to see what it is about.

oh dear, what has the flash done to the paintjob?

The ships are quite good too, as you can see from this blurry overexposed photo (sorry), and it it quite cheap to start compared to the likes of GW (but then, what isn’t?). We should soon have some “sea” boards, which may look more than a little like this black board, just in blue….

And, to end this post on a shameless request, I am still hoping to stick to the one true path of Warhammer Fanstay Battle, so if you would like a game, let me know. I don’t mind your skill level, army, paint (or not) or even if you don’t have an army and just want to try it out.

So this is clearly only for guys in the local area.. sorry! But we need to get the club back on form!

It is a 2 week, 4 game tournament with 2 games per evening on consecutive Wednesdays!
The details are on the flier above and it is a DOUBLES TOURNAMENT!
It is £5 to enter per person (but that includes both weeks club entry and prize fund)

So, grab a partner, throw together a 1500 point army and get on down to the club! Set up is from 6-6.30pm, then Round One is 2 hours, Round 2 is 2 hours. We have parking at the club and for free down Flamsteed Road.

If you need a partner, throw a post up on the club forum and we’ll find you someone to play with.

If Warhammer 40K is not your thing, we are also going to be running an Escalation Warhammer Fantasy League starting from 7th March – start at 500 points and add 500 points every month in manageable chunks…avoid having unpainted models backed up on your desk!! Great way to get some Fantasy in!! If you are an experienced player, come on down with a new army and build up over the months to the staggering sizes of Fantasy!

The perfect opportunity to learn to play and get those Christmas models on the tabletop finally!!

Love to mangle your opponent on the sportsfield? Love Warhammer? Want to do them both at once? BLOODBOWL RETURNS!! Starting 29th February we are running some starter games to get us back up to speed with the aim of running a BloodBowl Premier League starting 21st March

Don’t forget we still run Warmachine, Malifaux and regular pick up play for 40k.

Well, we have been running for just over a month now and things are looking good so far. We have had up to 20 people at the club on some nights, but there is certainly room for some more.

club night

The range of games played is also increasing; I have seen games of Warhammer 40k, Warhammer Fantasy Battle, Warmachine/Hordes, Malifaux, Puppet wars, Dystopian Wars and Dreadfleet over the past few weeks, and I know there are people interested in Lord of the Rings, Infinity, ,Magic: the gathering, Bloodbowl and other GW specialist games. If I have missed anything, let me know! If you want to play 40k (or probably Malifaux) you can just turn up as there are enough players, but it is worth logging on to our forums and arranging a game for the other systems. Or if you are not that organised, you can do what I do- bring something and a 40k army, so I have a fallback option. If you want to try Dreadfleet, we have a copy on loan for 6 months, so you can try it out if you are one of the first 2 people interested on the night. I am sure we have people who would be interested in playing board games as well ( I know I would), so if this is more you thing, let us know and/or bring something along.

our forums...

A bit of forum news: unfortunately, we are getting an increasing number of spammers trying to sign up so I have blocked a range of IP addresses to try and keep things in check. If you find you cannot reach the forum, just email the club and we will fix the blocks. If this does not work we may have to consider getting anyone who wants to sign up for an account to email the club first. It’s all a bit annoying, but that is the internet for you.

Please don’t let this deter you from signing up- no spammers are getting through, these changes are just to make admin of the forums easier.

A quick final thing: is there anything you would like to see us add or do differently? The members make the club, so what you want really does matter to us.